Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
VLC has a history of multitudes of issues with playback. Here is the recommended playback guide for Windows users, which essentially installs and configures MPC-HC with LAV Video Decoder and madVR: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15223
An alternative with good playback technology is mpv, but that requires much more setup as its UI is confusing for most users, plus it requires command line stuff.
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
In the "Config" -> "Speed/Skip" menu, make sure to have only "Clock Throttle" enabled. "VSync Throttle" changes the emulation rate to match your refresh rate, which is inaccurate for speed run timing. Ideally, if you're doing this, you should have freesync/g-sync or have a CRT monitor set to the exact frame rate of the system you're playing or else you will experience bad input latency and frame drops.
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
The hardest Worms Armageddon rope race map has been beaten in sections by human players, but never by a TASer. I've tried it myself, and it's just too tedious to bear to TAS. It is surely possible, but with the tools available, it's harder to TAS than play in realtime.
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I'm with Nach there. I think it's more likely that the current theories surrounding quantum mechanics just result from a lack of understanding of the observed data.
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
"Cosmos" can be said to essentially mean "deterministic system". Although I don't believe anything (yes, anything) fully, the way I would like to think of the cosmos is that the entire cosmos is a deterministic system of rules. The matter comprising me may be a large set of data points in space, and space may be a multi-dimensional array of possibly infinite resolution. I would like if the way these data points interact with the rest of the data points in the cosmos is deterministic, as that might mean that what we humans have observed with science so far is an accurate subset of that model.
I, through the deterministic processes which govern my body's matter, have as free a will as any moving object in the cosmos. I am simply a very complex moving object. Through these complex deterministic processes, I can breathe, love, see, cry, think, and everything else we consider makes us human.
Thinking of it this way, the cosmos is simple but beautiful.
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I watched it. The first 4 chapters were awesome! It was so satisfying seeing you get the maximum price for the full plate armor in chapter 3. I'm surprised it took so many frames to get a decent price for the half plate armor. Was that really the minimum? That's crazy!
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
The wall-bumping sounds are pro! I think of it like Mario jumping backwards in SMB: something that seems like it should lose time but somehow doesn't.
I'm watching the first part and I'm excited for chapter 5, adelikat!
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Aktan wrote:
I'm not sure about now, but in the past, loading lossless RGB H.264 in Avisynth was a pain to do with a lot of problems. I think natt figured out a solution.
I used to do it with DirectShowSource with a graph that loaded LAV Filters, but now the most recent release of FFMS2 does it perfectly with FFVideoSource. It's no longer "a pain".
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
More specifically if you're using Windows, go here: https://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/
Click "Download FFmpeg [revision identifier here] 64-bit Static", open it up with any decent archive tool, and find the "bin" folder. The ffmpeg.exe inside that folder is the tool you need to extract somewhere, such as beside the video you want to edit/convert. You can write a batch file (.bat; script that runs Windows command lines) with a command line that does what you want. Here's an example of remuxing an mp4 file to mkv, just one of millions of things you can do with ffmpeg:
ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -c copy -map 0 output.mkv
You can encode a huge uncompressed avi emulator dump to a much smaller lossless rgb h264 with lossless flac audio for archival with one command line:
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Holy fuckin' shit. This is amazing. I voted yes. It's so beautiful.
It's funny to think that I thought 3000 redubs on my most optimized TAS of a Worms Armageddon rope race map was a lot. 226 million is actually a lot. Is that number entirely from your program reconsidering things in order to reach its goal state? Is it a sort of brute-force input algorithm, or does it know a lot about the game? Anyway, the result is insanely impressive.
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
ALAKTORN wrote:
Lex wrote:
This problem is minuscule compared to the problem of speed running and more importantly, TAS validity, being based on real physics, despite how digital and conceptual everyone would like to believe it to be.
This caught my attention. What do you mean?
Zeupar asked me in a PM what I meant by that line, so you can read our conversation. I'm lazy, so I didn't want to rewrite it.
12:38:50 <Zeupar> Hi, LexSfX
12:39:09 <LexSfX> hellooooo
12:39:35 <Zeupar> "This problem is minuscule compared to the problem of speed running and more importantly, TAS validity, being based on real physics, despite how digital and conceptual everyone would like to believe it to be."
12:39:52 <Zeupar> Could you please elaborate on that? I don't quite get the point you are trying to make.
12:40:05 <LexSfX> oh
12:40:47 <LexSfX> TASing is an idea surrounding what a player could possibly do if they played perfectly
12:40:56 <Zeupar> Yup
12:41:07 <LexSfX> however, almost all TASes do things that a player couldn't possibly do even if they played perfectly
12:41:17 <LexSfX> because physics prevent it
12:41:21 <Zeupar> Oh, I get what you mean
12:41:33 <LexSfX> yeah, it's just a minor thing, really
12:41:34 <LexSfX> but like
12:41:35 <Zeupar> I think the community is long past that "super-human idea" idea though
12:41:38 <LexSfX> it affects the core of the concept
12:41:40 <LexSfX> yeah
12:41:46 <Zeupar> -idea
12:41:49 <LexSfX> like i said in my post, people just want to have fun with games
12:41:52 <LexSfX> so it's not a big deal now
12:42:04 <LexSfX> just like Warp's gripes
12:42:06 <LexSfX> not a big deal
12:42:18 <Zeupar> But you also mentioned "the problem of speedrunning"
12:42:24 <Zeupar> What are you referrig to with that?
12:43:21 <LexSfX> i meant that is also based on physics, but i forget what exactly i meant
12:43:29 <LexSfX> there was a point at the time, i swear! haha
12:43:42 <LexSfX> oh, right
12:43:43 <LexSfX> like
12:43:56 <LexSfX> it's possible to do things that are extremely difficult to replicate to get the best run
12:44:24 <LexSfX> the game could glitch out due to your particular computer you're using doing something that no other copy does
12:44:29 <LexSfX> that sort of thing
12:44:37 <LexSfX> on a low level
12:44:39 <LexSfX> within the chips
12:44:44 <LexSfX> electric surge, etc.
12:45:29 <LexSfX> like what happened to the Super Nintendo at the end of the SMW section of the TAS block at AGDQ 2016
12:45:55 <LexSfX> it glitched in a unique way that was only cosmetic
12:46:35 <LexSfX> anyway, my point was that these are all problems that don't matter
12:46:46 <LexSfX> because it's more fun to ignore them in favor of what's fun
12:48:45 <Zeupar> Well, what you are describing is really rare in the speedrunning world anyway :P
12:48:50 <LexSfX> exactly!
12:48:53 <LexSfX> see, that's what i mean
12:49:03 <LexSfX> it's so rare and meaningless that it shouldn't be discussed too much
12:49:09 <LexSfX> just like what Warp is talking about
12:49:20 <LexSfX> just use the right category and everything's fine
12:50:02 <Zeupar> Yeah
Joined: 6/25/2007
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Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
There is a sticky thread in this forum called "Note to newcomers: Please use DeSmuME 9.9 for TASing". I suggest reading it, as it contains some pertinent information relating to your question. Happy TASing! :)
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
They just want to help you gain some peace of mind. I suggest you reread some of these posts with that in mind.
Edit, to add:
Regarding anything you want, you have 4 reasonable choices: make/retrieve it yourself, wait for it to appear for you by happy luck, buy it from a willing seller (which may also require waiting for that opportunity), or accept that you can't have it. I know this and it brings me peace of mind, because I can simply go through the options and decide which option I prefer. I don't consider begging or hoping since that's just stressful. It's nicer to relax. Living in frustration about the state of things isn't very nice. I say all this because I used to be that way until I discovered this logic.
Another edit:
This thread seems to be taken less as a thread about "worrying trends" and more about "Warp is worrying" because speed running trends are all based on the context of what speed runners and their viewers enjoy, which seems to be obvious to everyone else. At this point, the thread is meant to help you understand and not stay worried about these trends which everyone else understands better and be contented.
This problem is minuscule compared to the problem of speed running and more importantly, TAS validity, being based on real physics, despite how digital and conceptual everyone would like to believe it to be. That, though, is also not discussed too much because there's nothing we can do about it and we all just want to have fun with games together.
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
"Cheating" only exists within the context of a category with rules against a particular method. That run you call "cheating" should just be considered to fit another category.
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
It's a natural democracy. The proportion of runs in a given category correlates in a relevant manner to the proportion of people interested in that category.
This is me.